Dragonsblood (57 page)

Tilara gave Lorana a probing look and, satisfied, nodded. “I’d heard that

you felt the death of every dragon,” she commented.

Lorana nodded, her eyes dark with sorrow.

“Then no one has a better reason to find a cure than you.”

She turned away from Lorana and started bustling around the platters and

chivying Kiyary to get everything just so. When she turned back again, her

eyes were bright with tears and she had a plate with several sweetrolls on

it.

“You haven’t eaten yet,” Tilara said, thrusting the plate at Lorana. She

gestured to one of the chairs. “Sit, and eat.”

“But—”

“You’ll learn nothing with a growling stomach,” Tilara insisted.

“She’s right, you know,” M’tal agreed, stuffing another sweetroll into his

mouth.

“And if you choke to death, you’ll do us no good, either,” Tilara scolded the

ex-Weyrleader. Salina added a quick murmur of agreement, giving her

weyrmate a dark look.

Lorana’s attempts to bolt her food were also thwarted.

“I spent more time making them than you are eating them,” Tilara told her

reprovingly. “Stop to taste them, at least, girl!”

Lorana reddened, but she did slow down, and as she did so, she realized

that Tilara and Kiyary had outdone themselves in making the sweetrolls.

They were pungent, sometimes spicy, with thin slices of wherry meat, some

sauce that Lorana didn’t recognize, and thin-sliced vegetables artfully mixed

in. Some were cold and others were hot, and all together they were more of

a meal than a snack.

When they were all full and the sweetrolls gone, Tilara bustled Kiyary into

collecting the used plates back onto the trays.

“We’ll leave the
klah
here for you,” Tilara said. “It won’t get cold for a

while—I’ve put a warmer over it.” And with that she headed back to the

kitchens, Kiyary in tow.

By evening they had made far more progress, but it was not enough for

Lorana.

“We’re still no nearer to figuring out how to open that door,” she said,

jabbing her finger toward the poem-decorated door on the far wall of the

classroom. “And we’ve no better idea how to save the dragons.”

“Mmm, I’m not so sure about that,” Ketan disagreed. “We know that

dragons, like fire-lizards, have natural defenses against disease.”

“So?” Lorana demanded.

“And we know that this disease overwhelms those natural defenses,” Ketan

added.

“That’s all we do know,” Kindan snapped, sharing Lorana’s disappointment

and anger.

“And we know about PNA and how it contains the codes for all the vital

operations of the dragons, and all Pernese life-forms,” Ketan continued. “I

think that’s more than enough to learn in one day.”

“I agree,” M’tal announced. “My brain is feeling quite ruffled with all this. I’ll

be glad to have a night’s sleep in which to settle and soothe myself.”

Despite herself, Lorana chuckled in appreciation.

“Very well,” Kindan conceded, “I suppose we could do with a rest.”

“We’ll be back before dawn,” Lorana added firmly.

“
At
dawn,” M’tal corrected, “and after breakfast.”

The next morning, they met in the Kitchen Cavern for breakfast. M’tal

noticed how the dragonriders politely avoided them and how the

cooks—Kiyary in particular—went out of their way to be sure that they ate a

good meal.

“Kindan, what are you doing?” Ketan asked as he downed his second mug

of
klah.

M’tal and Salina smiled at each other. They, too, had noticed the harper’s

tapping on the table, but it was a well-known fact that the Weyr’s healer

always required
two
mugs of
klah
to wake up in the morning.

“Oh, sorry,” Kindan said absently, dropping his hands to his lap. A moment

later, one was up again as he took another mouthful of oatmeal. Shortly

after that, both of Kindan’s hands were on the tabletop again, tapping

softly.

Lorana gave him a look but shook her head.

“Kin—” Ketan began again, but Salina’s look cut him short. The

ex-Weyrwoman was looking intently at Kindan’s fingers.

Lorana noticed her look and frowned, closing her eyes in concentration. A

moment later, she opened them again and exclaimed delightedly to Kindan,

“You did it! You learned the sequence!”

Kindan, startled out of his reverie, gave her a surprised look. “I did?” he

asked. As her words registered, he shook his head. “No, I was just

practicing some drum codes . . .” His voice trailed off thoughtfully. “The

drum codes are sounds.”

“But they’re grouped the same way as the PNA sequences,” Lorana

insisted. Tentatively, she tapped out a sequence and then looked

challengingly at Kindan.

“That was the START sequence,” Lorana said.

“No, it was the ATTENTION sequence,” Kindan corrected her. He frowned

in thought and quickly tapped a different sequence. “What’s this?”

“That’s the STOP sequence,” Lorana answered promptly.

“It’s the END sequence for the drum codes,” Kindan told her. “What’s

this?” He tapped a set of sequences.

“ABC, CBA, BCA,” Lorana translated.

“You’re right! PNA is based on drum codes!” Kindan declared.

“I’d say it’s the other way around,” Ketan remarked after a moment.

Kindan frowned. “I suppose you’re right.”

“But it makes sense,” M’tal said. “The genetic code is designed to store the

most information possible in a group of three, so for simple drum codes it

would be just as efficient.”

As they returned to the Learning Room, Kindan explained, “I had this

strange dream that someone was trying to tell me something, some

message.”

“Now you know what it was,” Ketan said.

Kindan, inspired by his new understanding, soon caught up with the others.

Several times, in fact, they turned to him for guidance in difficult sections.

He would close his eyes in thought and tentatively tap out a sequence, and

correct it.

“How do you know whether it’s right?” Lorana asked when they’d solved

one particularly difficult problem.

“I’ve been drumming for Turns,” Kindan told her. “It wouldn’t sound right

unless it
was.
”

By evening the next day, they had all graduated from constructing simple

codons to working through replication and the creation of proteins.

“So the PNA controls how all of the cells in the dragons are created, grow,

interact, and die,” M’tal found himself explaining to a bemused B’nik at

dinner that night. “And PNA contains the fundamental instructions for

building defenses against disease and infections.”

B’nik, whose duties kept him from what everyone had started to call the

Learning Rooms, struggled to keep up with the old Weyrleader. “So, if we

can figure out which infection is affecting the dragons, we can build a

defense against it?”

“That’s the hope,” M’tal replied, surprised at B’nik’s quick grasp. “But we

haven’t finished the study books, and we know that there’s another room

between this one and the first one we discovered.”

“What’s in it?”

M’tal shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I suspect, given all that we’ve

learned, it is probably a room where we can experiment and observe.

Perhaps it has instruments to allow us to actually
see
the infection.”

“But I thought you said the infection—that ‘bacteria’ or ‘virus’ you were

talking about—is too small to see,” B’nik protested.

“It is,” M’tal agreed, “with the eye alone. But there are hints in the books that

there are tools that make such small things big enough to see.”

“Hmm.” B’nik leaned back in his seat, mulling over this revelation. Then he

leaned forward again and beckoned M’tal to come close to him. “Caranth is

getting worse,” he confessed. “How long do you think—”

“Are you asking if we can find a cure in time for Caranth?” M’tal asked

gently.

“And the others,” B’nik added quickly.

“We’ll do our best,” M’tal replied. “I know what you’re facing.”

B’nik gave him a bleak look. “Do you think—” He found that he couldn’t go

on and swallowed. He took a deep breath and began again. “I’d like you to

take over the Weyr if anything happens to Caranth.”

M’tal gave B’nik an encouraging smile and slapped the younger man on the

shoulder reassuringly. “It won’t come to that, B’nik,” he told the young

Weyrleader fiercely. “Not if I can help it.”

B’nik looked long into M’tal’s eyes and then nodded slowly. With a husky

voice he said, “Thank you.”

Loudly, Kindan closed his book and looked up at the others.

“Done!” he crowed. His grin faded when he saw that M’tal, Salina, and

Ketan had already closed their books. He was surprised to see that Lorana

was still reading. Indeed, she looked like she was just at the beginning of

the book. Kindan gave Ketan a questioning look.

“She’s rereading it,” Ketan explained.
“Again.”

With a frown, Lorana slammed her book shut and looked up angrily at the

others.

“So what do we know?” M’tal asked. “We know how the immune system

works both against specific and nonspecific assaults.”

“We know that sometimes the immune system can attack symbionts,”

Salina added, still surprised that there were tiny creatures that lived in

harmony with the dragons.

“And even the body itself,” Ketan added.

“And we have a vague idea of how to build new responses to attacks,”

Kindan said.

“But only by changing PNA,” Lorana added glumly. “We can’t make one of

these ‘antibiotics’ or ‘antivirals’ to directly assault the disease.”

“But once we can engineer a change,” M’tal corrected, “we can build a

‘retrovirus’ to correct all the genes of all the cells in the dragons, so that

they can correctly fight the infection.”

“And once we get it right with
one
dragon,” Salina added, “we can take

ichor—the dragon’s blood—from it and inject it into other dragons, and the

cure will spread through the circulatory system.”

“And,”
Ketan added ominously, “it’d be best to use the cure on a queen

who’s close to clutching—the cure would be carried to the hatchlings.”

M’tal and Salina exchanged disturbed looks. There was only one queen

near to clutching and that was Minith.

“But we still are no closer to identifying the infection,” Lorana protested.

She turned toward the still-closed door. “And we have no idea how to open

that door.”

“Except what’s written on it,” Kindan said.

“Does anyone know how to talk with people who have been dead for over

four hundred Turns?” Lorana asked acerbically.

“There must be a way,” Salina said, “or they wouldn’t have put that verse on

the door.”

“Or built these rooms,” M’tal added.

“How do we know that?” Lorana asked. “Perhaps these Learning Rooms

were meant for others? Perhaps they’ve already been used and we’re not

supposed to be here.”

“No,” Kindan answered firmly. “ ‘Wind Blossom’s Song’ could only refer to

you. These rooms were made for us.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully and

muttered, “Or you.”

“Then why,” Lorana cried, her arms flung out in despair, “don’t I know the

answer?”

Ketan looked at her sympathetically. He knew that she was right, that they

could just be chasing a phantom hope. But that was the only hope left. If the

answers to their problems weren’t behind those doors, then the dragons

would all die, of that he was certain. And if the answer was behind the door,

then he was equally convinced that Lorana had to be the “healer lass”

mentioned in the song. One look at Kindan convinced him that the harper

was just as certain.

In the silence that filled the room after her question, M’tal rose from his

chair and stretched. “Let’s go,” he said, “and sleep on this. Tomorrow we

may have more answers.”

“Tomorrow Thread falls over Nerat and Upper Crom,” Lorana protested.

“How many more dragons must die before we can open that door?”

“I don’t know Lorana,” Salina said, rushing over to the younger woman and

hugging her fiercely. “But you can only do so much.”

“I know,” Lorana said miserably, burying her head in the other woman’s

shoulder. “But—”

“Sh, sh,” Salina said soothingly.

“We must leave now, Lorana,” Ketan said. “We need our rest, and M’tal will

be flying Thread tomorrow.”

“And we’ll be tending to injured dragons,” Lorana noted. “We won’t be here

tomorrow.”

M’tal shooed them all out of the room. As they climbed the stairs back up to

the second level, he said, “A day’s rest from this will do us all good.”

“At least we’ll have enough dragons to fight with,” Kindan added.

“That’s true,” M’tal rumbled agreeably. Judiciously, he added, “They’re all a

bit more green than I would have liked but—”

A sharp intake of breath from Lorana interrupted him. “What?” he asked.

“It’s Caranth,” Lorana said. “He’s not feeling well.” She glanced at M’tal. “I

don’t think B’nik should lead the Fall tomorrow.”

As they crested the top of the stairs, a loud barking cough echoed down

the corridor from the Weyrleader’s quarters.

M’tal’s face darkened and he picked up his pace.

“Well, now, this is
much
better,” D’gan declared as he flew slowly in front of